Oppo Find X7 Ultra: smartphone features the first dual periscope zooms | Hacker News Reader

Oppo Find X7 Ultra: smartphone features the first dual periscope zooms

everyonegaming.com

13 pointsbizmedia22 comments

One periscope telephoto unit has 2.8x optical zoom with a 65mm focal length, while another has a 6x optical zoom with a 135mm focal length

(per https://www.gsmarena.com/oppo_find_x7_ultra_in_for_review-ne...)

With just about every generation of phones that comes out, I realize how extremely non-central of a phone customer I am. Basically none of the features they are adding are of any interest to me and I want almost all of the ones they are getting rid of. Sucks to be me I guess.

I want a rootable phone with a physical keyboard, and every time my current one gets old I hope it won't be the last one ever produced.

The the features I want are more often in low end phones, saves a fortune.

>and I want almost all of the ones they are getting rid of

Like which?

no screen cutout (although androids ability, in the developer options, to just turn off the screen in line with the camera cutout basically does this for me)

headphone jack

small overall size

SD card slot

IR blaster

FM Radio tuner (goes hand-in-hand with headphone jack since the headphone wire usually acts as the antenna)

Easily rootable/unlocked bootloader

ideally relatively repairable (at the very least to include replacing the screen/battery with a minimum of specialized tools).

There are many phones that have what you want. Look at Chinese brands. Except the small size. Nobody buys small phones anymore, so they're a niche nobody caters to.

For me, new phones are missing those features, wich were quite common a few years ago:

- screen size < 6 inches

- 3.5mm audio jack support

- battery lasting more than one day

You might be interested in something like the Sony Xperia 10 IV[1], it has a 6" screen, headphone jack, and a 5000mAh battery.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Xperia_10_IV

> like its predecessor, it’s only planned for release in China.

source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/8/24029647/oppo-find-x7-ultr...

Patent encumbered?

It's a Chinese company, so I would hazard a guess it has to do with the China-West Cold War.

On that note, the phone is powered by the latest and greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon and uses the latest and greatest of Sony's CMOS sensors. Its predecessor also collaborated with Hasselblad.

To what end are we waging this Cold War, again?

> It's a Chinese company, so I would hazard a guess it has to do with the China-West Cold War.

The one where we don't allow Chinese companies to sell phones in the rest of the world?

> To what end are we waging this Cold War, again?

The democracy in Taiwan that China is perpetually harassing and actively threatening to violently overthrow via actual hot war, and their other neighbors who China actively harasses because China decided they own half the sea even after international court rulings that they don't, may be able to answer your question if you ask them nicely.

I know why we are waging this Cold War, I am asking to what end and I guess I must be more explicit about it:

* Why is Sony selling one of the newest and most powerful CMOS sensors in the world to China?[1]

* Why is Qualcomm selling one of their newest and most powerful ARM processors to China?[2] This is fabbed by TSMC using their 4nm process[3], too.

And expanding on this:

* Why is Nvidia selling their latest processors to China?[4]

* Why is Intel selling their latest processors to China?[5]

* Why is AMD selling their latest processors to China?[6]

[1]: https://wccftech.com/sony-lyt-900-goes-official/

[2]: https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2023/10/qualcomm-laun...

[3]: https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-gen-3-t...

[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38898388

[5]: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-quietl...

[6]: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-7000-cpus-get-price-...

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I ask once more: To what end are we waging this Cold War, again?

What we say and what we do are not lining up. Even Taiwan themselves are (albeit indirectly) selling China the rope with which to hang them (Taiwan).

Oppo sells mostly outside the US, but the fact it doesn’t sell in the rest of Asia where oppo is popular leads me to believe it’s an intellectual property theft issue. Thailand and other places will enforce patents and trade disputes, while China almost always finds for Chinese companies no matter how egregious the theft.

I'd love for smartphones to have a bayonet for C-mount-sized AF-capable lenses. Even flagships like this have a tiny sensor and a tiny lens for their super-tele (which is still "only" 135mm equivalent).

This is pretty cool. I traveled to Patagonia light and often would find myself missing my DSLR. I only had an older iPhone 13 that had pretty good photos, but I often felt like I could have taken some good memories with a new iPhone 15 Pro with the telephoto lens. But cameras are already so good! Crazy to have this stuff in one's pocket. Young me would have lost his mind.

why is that called periscope zoom?

The inbound light is bounced horizontally in the phone in order to physically be able to reach that level of optical zoom.

Neat. Has anyone fit a tiny little telescoping lens into that horizontal space to offer fluid intermediate zoom settings (without resorting to lossy/digital tricks)?

Zoom lens takes more space, has worse f stop, and/or has worse quality like you see on full frame or aps c cameras. (Compare the size of a 50mm f/1.8 vs a 24-70mm f/2.8)

Smartphone cameras are the new diapers/tampons. Every year more megapixels, more zoom, more cameras, more absorption.

Does nobody think to focus innovation elsewhere? Am I really the only one that makes sporadic - at best - use of my phone's camera?

There isn't a single smartphone without a camera on the North American market that I could find.

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